Who really benefits from adoption?

As National Adoption Month comes to a close, I thought I’d squeak in one last post on adoption. Not that I won’t blog about adoption ever again, because I will. I just won’t be able to do it during National Adoption Month for another year.

If you know an adoptive family well, you know that the comments like “Your child is so blessed to have a family like you” and “Good for you for adopting. I could never do that” irk us more than the ignorant, naive questions that people ask. I know it’s counterintuitive to be irritated when someone compliments you but see ignorant comments as educational opportunities.

It all goes back to the Gospel. Remember when Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

While children who are adopted certainly benefit, the blessing to the adoptive family is equally as amazing and VERY overlooked.

Allow me to enumerate. Please excuse the list style over carefully thought out paragraphs. It’s late and there’s a lot of other stuff going on fighting for processing power…

On a personal level, our adoption journey has challenged and humbled me as a person and parent in ways I never imagined.
I’ve been forced to learn new parenting skills. I mean you can always use more of those, right?
As my friend Alaina describes adoptive parenting, we are the ones who are blessed with the opportunity to love on Jesus everyday by wiping tears, feeding mouths, and driving to the ER at 3am in the morning.
Adoption has allowed me real life experience with one of the biggest spiritual analogies.
Our adoption journey led us to be gloriously ruined* by coming face-to-face with the global orphan crisis.
Adoption stories are always sprinkled with miracles. We have been blessed by so many adoption story miracles we could write a book.
We’ve been blessed with the opportunity to spread what we know to be true (not what the media says) about adoption to many families.

*more to come on gloriously ruined at a later post.

Also, just to clarify. We could never adopt either. We’re human. We’re selfish. We’re sinful. We’re impatient.

However, we serve a God who is bigger than all that. He called us and He never calls without providing the extra grace so that He can when we can’t.